Zap to Zero Day 24 | Reality of Control

art is pebbles on the beach

imagine there is a sparkling shore and you have an open day to spend there. just you and the water washing up at intervals beside you. blue sky above, blue water at your feet and beyond the horizon. it fills your senses and makes you understand what infinity means. it’s a pulse. here you are, and you have to do something, although all you want to do is stare out at infinity and listen to it roar. but you have to do something, and naturally your eyes begin to search the ground for treasures. eventually you’re crouching at the edge of the pulse that echoes forever, picking up any small specimen that catches your attention. you lift it to your face, turn it over. finger its crevaces. maybe you smell it, taste it. until it feels like part of you, like the attention you gave it leaves a certain energy with it. you judge that it is good and place it in your pouch. at the end of this day, you spread all the pieces out and organize your collection. you wonder if the best one might sell at the gift shop.

It fills your senses and makes you understand what infinity means. It's a pulse.

here you are, and you have to do something, although all you want to do is stare out at infinity and listen to it roar. but you have to do something, and naturally your eyes begin to search the ground for treasures.

Now I feel bad that I haven't read everything from you already.

Speaking as a young American adult, it seems the culture is broken. The test of a healthy culture should be the general health of the population because it is the culture that supplies the population with information and choice. Did it present you with choices such that if followed, they would lead you to a flourishing life? When I look at myself, family members, close friends, or employers, I find that going along with the culture, using it as the template from which to generate life, plugging in its signals, and following its directions, one ends up miserable, unhappy, single, depressed and probably addicted to something, be it television or other media entertainment, drugs or pornography, gambling or incessant, narcissistic self-care. While I don’t have evidence for this claim, it feels as though recently our culture began to be used as a weapon against us. When I examine the cultural programming around me, and by this I mean the materials and messaging used to influence choices that rely on culturally-accepted norms as their justification, I see traps. I see destruction. The narrowed landscape of choice in the current culture is treacherous.

I have my personal experience to speak to this treachery. I listened and went along with the influence of culture long enough for it to mess up and show me that my choices were not my own. I wrote of this personal experience in 2021 for Citadel 21 volume 11, the article titled, “How a Lefty Became a Maxi.” It was my response to the undeniable awakening I went through in 2020. If there ever was a single moment that a human being becomes a sovereign individual, I had mine that summer, and I’ll never forget it. There is a marked difference between who I was prior to June 2020 and who I am now.

Look at them. So many school shootings and they still love their guns! Look at us. We have no guns and no school shootings²³. We have it all figured out.

My story is bigger than what I can cover with one article, and besides that, I’m still processing all the changes I’ve gone through. I have been struggling to find a way to share it, to grasp the shape that it takes when told. The difference between who I was before and who I am now is disorienting, and much of the pieces of my past I have forgotten on purpose.

I hope you will lend me your ear, as i have something to say into it.

lately, i have spent a lot of time thinking about writing on stacker news. I find myself feeling tense and confused and vague about it. i want to layout the whole thing, like why i am thinking about writing on stacker news and why it feels really hard to do it. i mostly want to set it out in writing for myself because it feels like a block i need to get through. but i thought hey, at the same time, why don't i present my case to the stackers and receive the benefit of your perspective on the matter.

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in other places i write, it is easier for me to take criticism. i can accept it of my more interpretive work like poems. at the same time, i haven't received a huge amount nor a consistent load of criticism on my serious pursuits. when it comes to my writing, the work that feels like what i am made to do, i have a hard time accepting that someone will find something impure in it.

this is another way to interpret the block i'm experiencing: i feel that everyone on stacker news is smarter than me and already knows everything that i know, and knew it before i knew it. what conversation could i add to? and also, what is it that i think about?? when i sit down to write an sn post, my mind is spinning up too many possibilities and they all convince me i have nothing to say. i seem unable to find a central point to speak on nor an accessible perspective to speak from.

if anything i've said here is making sense, i hope you'll let me know it. i trust you will graciously take it in.

does anyone think about the things i think about?

and also, what is it that i think about??

Your writing style is addicting. Kind of a more friendly Popescu. I read it to see what's going on in that head of yours more than for this experiment. I bet I'm not the only one.

Thank you! I also write to see what's in my or been in my head.

Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind's elation And little girls from Sweden dream of silver-screen quotation And if you want these kind of dreams, it's Californication

It's the edge of the world and all of Western civilization The sun may rise in the East, at least it settled in a final location It's understood that Hollywood sells Californication

Pay your surgeon very well to break the spell of aging Celebrity skin: is this your chin or is that war you're waging? First born unicorn Hardcore soft porn

Dream of Californication Dream of Californication Dream of Californication Dream of Californication